As this patent application is being prepared, wildfires are burning out of control in eastern Arizona. Such situations are not isolated, but are common albeit dismaying facts of life in certain regions of the United States, such as southern California and Arizona, and elsewhere in the world. Fighting and containing such fires is a hugely expensive job, and beyond the economic and human cost of fighting these fires, the economic loss and human suffering is almost immeasurable.
Such fires are often fought with heavy manpower, and with whatever technology can be brought to bear. But water resources (reservoirs), such as lakes, streams, swimming pools, and other bodies of water in the fire-prone areas are often not brought to bear as well as they can be. The problem is that in order to fight a wildfire with water, this water needs to be pumped to the scene at exceptionally high flow rates and pressures, usually by employing gas-powered water pumps typically operating in the vicinity of 100 gallons a minute and at 100 psi. For a continuous flow of water to a single location, there is no problem. But, when it is necessary to switch the deployment of water, that is, to take water which is flowing at high flow and pressure to “location A” and immediately redeploy that flow to “location B,” or to smoothly and continuously go from a steady default state where no water is being deployed to a state where water is to be deployed to a particular location, there does not appear in the art to be any fluid flow valves which are up to the task.
In particular, it would be desirable to have available for fighting wildfires, a fluid flow valve apparatus which enables these gas-powered water pumps to operate unattended, while dynamically and automatically switching the deployment of water from one location to another as needed. Such a valve needs to be “invisible” to the gas-powered water pump, so that the gas-powered water pump can operate continuously and unabated, irrespective of the location to which the valve is directing the pump's output. As a “default,” the pump should be able to operate continuously without interruption while the valve simply recirculates water from a reservoir back into the reservoir. Then, when the water needs to be routed to a particular location to fight a wildfire, the valve should enable the water to be smoothly and continuously diverted to the desired location, without having to in any way change the unabated, continuous operation of the pump.
Fluid flow control valves have long been used to route the flow of fluid from a source to a selected destination or destinations for emission, while at the same time blocking the flow to other destinations. The prior art contains many such valves, both in US class 137 for Fluid Handling and class 251 for Valves and Valve Actuation.
Among these many valves to be found in the prior art are rotary flow valves, many of which can be found in class 137 subclass 625.46 and class 251 subclass 208. Rotary flow valves of particular interest are included in an information disclosure statement being filed concurrently with this application, and among these, U.S. Pat. No. 3,124,162; U.S. Pat. No. 3,369,565; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,448,214 provide particularly interesting multi-port capabilities.
However, none of the flow valves in the prior art including the three valves referenced above appear to simultaneously provide several particular desirable characteristics and features that are especially helpful to battling wildfires at high flow and pressure rates, namely: a) rotational actuation; b) the ability to achieve a continuous adjustment of flow rates; c) the ability to maintain a recirculating fluid flow other than as an exception, that is, to be able to substantially maintain a continuous recirculation of fluid out of and back into a fluid reservoir except in instances where it is desired to route the fluid elsewhere; d) the capability to provide substantially constant flow rates, that is, for the total flow output from the valve to always be substantially constant, even when the valve is being actuated to divert fluid flow from one place to another, thereby avoiding pressure buildups and variations that would occur if the flow rate was to be substantially altered during fluid rerouting; e) a simple valve configuration with a minimum of movable parts; f) a simple method of valve fabrication and assembly; g) the ability to direct the fluid flow solely by physical actuation against an exterior surface of the valve, rather than by more complex means such as spindles and pivots which connect to elements inside the valve and so are less simple, are more susceptible to breakage and failure, and so require more maintenance attention; and h) invisibility to the pump, particularly to a high-flow, high-pressure pump on the order of at least 75 gallons per minute and at 75 psi, and often 100 gallons a minute and at 100 psi or higher.
It would be very beneficial to provide a rotary flow valve which simultaneously has all of these desirable characteristics and features. Because of its ability to maintain a constant fluid flow other than as an exception, and the ease with which actuation is controlled, such valve is particularly useful as an aid to firefighting when the “exception” is itself the occurrence of a fire, by enabling gas powered water pumps to operate, unmanned.
While the ability to operate continuously in high-flow-high-pressure situations is preferred for fighting wildfires, such a valve can be used in a broad range of other applications as well, including those which use pumps with lower flow rates and pressures.